With more than one million page views and more than 4,000 items, this blog provides news and commentary on public policy, business and economic issues related to the $3 billion California stem cell agency, officially known as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM). David Jensen, a retired California newsman, has published this blog since January 2005. His email address is djensen@californiastemcellreport.com.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

The California state auditor this week warned that a host of
state agencies are poorly secured and vulnerable to intrusion, but the
California stem cell agency is apparently not now one of the miscreants.

In a report released yesterday, State Auditor Elaine Howe said that 73 of
the 77 state departments answering a recent security standards survey said that
they were not in compliance with security standards.

A story by Jon Ortiz and Jim Miller in The Sacramento Bee
said that most departments “have not planned for interruptions or disasters” and
five departments audited more closely all had “security deficiencies.”

The Bee story said state departments’ databanks are “stuffed
with Social Security numbers, medical records, tax return data and other
sensitive information.”

The $3 billion California stem cell agency is one of those
departments filled with sensitive data, including proprietary information that is
submitted as part of applications for the billions that the agency is handing
out.

Responding to a query today from the California Stem Cell
Report, Kevin McCormack, senior director of communications for the agency, said
that the agency was surveyed by the auditor and now meets state standards. He
said,

“We were one of those 77 departments. We did not have security deficiencies as such
– in that we put confidential information at risk – but some aspects of our
site were not in full compliance with the state standards, for example not
having a link to all previous privacy policies and the dates they were in
effect. So we put together a plan of action on how to correct the problems,
that plan was approved by the state and those changes have been implemented.”

McCormack continued,

“The question of proprietary information was one of the
things we had to address, namely showing all the protections we have in place
in our Grants Management System which is the only place that any kind of
proprietary information is kept. Because that system already requires separate
log in and password protections those met the state standards without any
changes being necessary.”

The agency has awarded tens of millions of dollars to a variety
of businesses. It also has relationships with researchers in a number of
countries, including China.

Periodically news surfaces about Internet theft of business
information by Chinese interests, including in the world of biotech and
pharmaceuticals (See here, here and here.)

China is also widely believed to have ambitious stem cell
research aspirations, although current specifics are scarce. In May, however, Reuters skimmed off a quick look at Chinese biotech. Earlier this month, China announced regulations aimed at both clearing the way for human research and regulating rogue stem
cell clinics. (See here also.)

The California research involving a Chinese collaborator
does not allow the collaborator password access to the stem cell agency’s grant
management system, McCormack said.

“None of the collaborative funding partners, foreign or
domestic, can access our (grant management system). We explicitly make clear in
the rules for these collaborations that we take care of the California portion
of the funding and their respective agency/government/institution, etc., takes
care of their portion. The California researchers would have access to our (system)
through a protected log in and password
but not their collaborative funding partner.”

The latest progress report on his research on the agency’s Web site said,

“The objective of this project is to establish the
feasibility of liver cell therapy with human induced hepatocyte-like cells
(iHeps). As proposed we established the feasibility of generating iHeps from
several expandable, potentially autologous human cell types. We identified
transcription factors effective in inducing hepatocyte differentiation as well
as further maturation of these cells. We also identified small molecules and
culture conditions (extracellular matrix composition and stiffness) that
promote proliferation and hepatocyte-specific differentiation. The next steps
are to investigate the genomic integrity and therapeutic efficacy of these
cells.”

About Me

The California Stem Cell Report is the only nongovernmental website devoted solely to the $3 billion California stem cell agency. The report is published by David Jensen, who worked for 22 years for The Sacramento Bee in a variety of editing positions, including executive business editor and special projects editor. He was the primary editor on the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning series, "The Monkey Wars" by Deborah Blum, which dealt with opposition to research on primates. Jensen served as a press aide in the 1974 campaign and first administration of Gov. Jerry Brown. (Time served: two years and one week.) He writes from his sailboat on the west coast of Mexico with occasional visits to land. Jensen began writing about the stem cell agency in 2005, noting that it is an unprecedented effort that uniquely combines big science, big business, big academia, big politics, religion, ethics and morality as well as life and death. The California Stem Cell Report has been identified as one of the best stem cell sites on the Internet. Its readership includes the media (both mainstream and science), a wide range of academic/research institutions globally, the NIH and California policy makers.